


Failure to Heed Evacuation Warnings May Result in Haunting

by burglebezzlement



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Beaches, Caretaking, F/F, Ghost Jumpers, Ghosts, Hair Brushing, Hurricanes & Typhoons, Hurt/Comfort, Islands, Minor Injuries, Rain, Research Trip, Science, Sharing a Bed, South Carolina, Spectral Field Theory, Storm preparations, Storms, Trapped by Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Erin and Holtz head to an island in South Carolina to check out a spirit who appears before bad storms. The complications: Nobody wants them to bust this ghost. Erin’s starting to realize she’s got a thing for Holtz. And then there’s the Category 2 hurricane bearing down on them….





	Failure to Heed Evacuation Warnings May Result in Haunting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rina (rinadoll)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinadoll/gifts).



> Happy Fandom 5K!
> 
> Bristow Island and the Gray Lady are based on a mixture of real-life legends about the Gray Man of Pawleys Island, South Carolina and the Grotto on Key West. Specific details about Bristow Island and local residents are fictionalized.

Erin turns on the soft sand. “We’re not trapping the Gray Lady, Holtz.”

Holtz raises one eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Absolutely not,” Erin says. She puts the PKE meter in Holtz’s hand and slams Ecto 1’s side door before Holtz can pick up the ghost trap again. “No way. No traps. We’re guests here. You know what the real estate lady said.”

“Blah blah curse, blah blah ghost,” Holtz says, but her grin says she’s winding Erin up. 

They’ve been on the road all day, trading off shifts driving, in order to make it down to the barrier islands of South Carolina before Hurricane Dana hits. The urban chaos of New York and Philadelphia giving way to the crowded beltways of suburban Maryland and Virginia, the wooded highways of North Carolina, and then they were on smaller roads, driving the Ecto 1 through sandy hills and scrub pines.

By the time they made it to the Bristow Island causeway, Erin wanted to stop for dinner, but the woman at the real estate office where they agreed to pick up the keys to the house had told them she’d be leaving at 6. And once they had the keys, Holtz wanted to push on.

The sky’s still blue, but clouds have started to move in. Erin can smell the ocean, salty and vast, just beyond the row of houses.

Holtz drapes one arm over Erin’s shoulders. “We’re gonna find a ghost here,” she says, taking a deep breath. “I can smell it.”

“Holtz….” Erin knows she should duck out from Holtz’s arm, knows that Holtz’s habit of casually touching people doesn’t mean anything. 

(Doesn’t mean anything to Holtz. It’s come to mean a lot to Erin.)

“Come on,” Holtz says, pulling her arm away. “Let’s go survey our new domain.”

* * *

After the Mercado, after everything with Rowan, after the portal — they’ve been working a lot of things out. 

Moving into the firehouse, to being with. At first, the firehouse was just a work space, but slowly each of them has moved in, making it into a home. It’s been a long time since Erin’s lived with someone. Even longer since she’s lived with someone she wanted to live with.

A few months back, they realized that they were reacting to events, not working on a coordinated research program. They jumped whenever someone in New York City called ghost, and while that meant a few interesting sightings of Class I and II floating vapors and apparitions, there were a lot more cases where the tenants or homeowners should have started with an exterminator first. 

Abby and Erin sat down one night and made a list of potential research locations. The kind of places where homeowners wouldn’t call them in, and they’d have a solid chance of seeing a higher-level apparition. Then Patty found the list and took about half of the potential research areas off it, muttering about poorly attested sources and hearsay. Holtz got hold of the list next, and ranked the locations by potentially unguarded military scrapyards and proximity to Area 51, after which Erin took the list back and ruthlessly slashed and cut until it represented the top potential paranormal research areas in the world. And then Patty pointed out the questionable likelihood of getting the Ghostbusters’ research equipment across an international border, and the list got refined down to the top areas in the continental US. 

Bristow Island, South Carolina was one of the places to make the final version of the list. It’s an attested phenomenon — a lady in gray, name unknown, who locals claim walks the beaches ahead of any significant storm. 

They’re borrowing the house from Abby’s mom’s friends, the FIedersons. The Flendersons agreed to give the Ghostbusters access to their beach house in return for putting on the storm shutters and a written agreement not to bust the ghost.

“The Lady protects the island,” Mrs. Flenderson had told Erin, when she called the make arrangements. “They say as long as she walks the beaches, the island will be spared.”

The real estate lady told them the same thing. She refused to give them the keys until they promised not to bust the Gray Lady. “She’s the only thing holding this island back from the sea,” she told them, squinting at the two Ghostbusters like she didn’t trust them. “I heard what you two girls did in New York.”

“Saved it?” Holtz asked disingenuously.

The real estate lady wasn’t impressed.

“Have you seen her?” Erin asked. “Any ideas where we might be able to observe her? Observe only, we promise.”

The real estate lady hadn’t deigned to reply.

* * *

Their temporary beach house is a weather-beaten structure on low wood pilings. It looks old enough to have survived multiple hurricanes, although Erin secretly itches to run calculations on likely wind shear against the structure. On the ocean side, there’s a deck facing the long, wooden walkway that leads over the dunes and out to the beach. 

The neighborhood is a line of houses along a two-lane road, facing the beach at the front and the water between the island and the mainland at the back. Scrubby trees grow between the houses and across the road.

The parking area is under the house, under the pilings, and Erin suddenly wonders if this was all a mistake. Right now Hurricane Dana is only a Category One, still a day away, still out in the cone of uncertainty where it could make landfall elsewhere — could be a glancing blow. But if it strengthens, if there’s a direct hit, if they get more storm surge than they expected — Erin looks out at the waves and starts calculating how high the water could come.

While Erin pulls bags from the car, looking for the things they’ll need inside, Holtz pulls out a set of bright plastic car ramps.

Erin turns one of the ramps over in her hands. They look normal on the outside, but the inside is filled with a strangely organic pattern of cross-bracing elements, like the ramps were colonized by coral.

“Where did you find these?” she asks.

Holtz grins. “Mocked ‘em up in CAD when I heard the storm had turned,” she says. “I had a 3D printer who owed me a favor.”

They look amazing, like someone decided to design modernist car ramps. Erin turns them over again, admiring the patterns, and then sets them down next to the wheels. They drag everything out onto the sand, and then Holtz guides Erin in driving the Ecto 1 up on the ramps.

She’s used to getting out of the car, but opening the door now is a new experience. The sand’s a full foot lower than it was before driving up the ramps. 

“Like climbing out of a big rig,” Erin says, coming around to the other side of the car. Holtz touches her glasses in a salute, and then smiles. 

“Figure we better anchor her down.” Holtz pulls a huge metal spiral out of the back and starts screwing it into the sand by the rear tire. Once the anchor’s in, Holtz brings out a huge chain and attaches the frame of the Ecto 1 to the sand. 

“There.” Holtz pats the car. “No car rustlers tonight, baby.”

Erin squints. “Did you expect any?”

“Nah, but this way the car can’t float away if the storm surge is worse than forecast.” Holtz pushes her sunglasses back on her head. “Inside?”

They drag their bags into the house. Inside, it’s a quaint bungalow with aqua-painted trim and gold countertops. “Kind of vintage,” Erin says, looking over at Holtz. Through the kitchen windows, they can see the trees and palmettos that line the road, already tossing in the wind. 

“So,” Holtz says. “Storm shutters?” She waggles her eyebrows. “I brought head lamps.”

Erin slumps. The Ecto 1 is fine for trips through city, but it wasn’t designed for long hauls, and Erin’s exhausted and achy from driving in traffic all day. 

“The storm’s not even getting here until tomorrow night,” Erin says. “Can we get food first? Please? And maybe sleep?”

Holtz digs into the cooler she brought. “Absolutely. Dehydrated meal?”

Erin starts to shake her head, and then remembers that they’re on an island. There’s a few small inns that might serve food, but all of them will be closed because of the storm. The nearest restaurants are back on the mainland, beyond the causeway and the evacuation zone.

It’s a voluntary evacuation for now, but if the storm strengthens, the Ghostbusters might not be able to get back over the bridge. If they don’t want to blow their chance of seeing the Gray Lady, they’re stuck here.

The power’s still on, so Erin digs through the kitchen cabinets until she finds a big saucepan. Holtz digs through the supplies she bought the day before and pulls out a box of pasta.

“I went with the cavatappi,” she says. “I like the curls.”

Erin’s a terrible cook, but she follows Holtz’s instructions and manages not to burn herself while they put together plates of cavatappi, covering the pasta with pesto and cheese from Holtz’s cooler, which has HIGGINS INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE MORTUARY PROGRAM — DO NOT STEAL written on the plastic side in black Sharpie.

They bring the plates of food and a couple cold beers from the cooler out to the deck, where there’s a plastic table and chairs overlooking the ocean. It’s nearly dark, but the breeze from the ocean must be keeping the bugs away. 

“It’s beautiful,” Erin says, looking out.

Holtz cracks open a beer and hands it to her. Erin takes it and tries the pasta. It’s surprisingly good.

She can almost forget about the monster storm brewing out there, beyond the horizon.

Almost.

* * *

The beach house has five bedrooms, but only one bed.

“This can’t be right,” Erin says, peeking into the upstairs again.

Holtz is leaning against the doorframe. “Abby did say they were redecorating.”

“She did?” Damn it. Erin remembers now. She did.

“It’s fine,” Holtz says. “I can take the couch.”

“No,” Erin says, because that’s just silly, and anyway, Holtz must be as tired as she is, after a full day in the car. “No, we can share. The room with the bed is probably the safest anyway, downstairs and only one window — that’s how that works, right? We need to stay away from windows. So we can share.”

She’s talking too much. She’s making this awkward, Erin can tell. It doesn’t need to be awkward, she reminds herself. It’s just two friends sharing a bed. It’s not a big deal. 

Holtz raises an eyebrow. “You sure?”

Erin’s sure.

* * *

Erin gets washed up, taking out her contacts and brushing her teeth and changing into an ancient UMich t-shirt and soft knit shorts. She pulls her hair back and then lets it back down, and then pulls it back up again.

She’s dithering. She knows it.

When Erin gets out of the bathroom, Holtz is already in bed, watching something on her cell phone. The room’s cool, an early autumn chill blowing in with the winds of the storm, and Holtz has thrown an afghan over the faded vintage bedspread. 

“Erin! Get in here.” Holtz puts her phone down and starts fluffing the pillows. “I have obtained the finest in entertainment.” She holds the phone up, like an offering.

Erin squints at it. “What are we watching?”

“Ghost Jumpers.” Holtz hits play. “They came to Bristow Island a few years ago.” 

Holtz pats the bed, and Erin pulls back the covers to get in. _It’s not weird_ , she reminds herself. _Definitely not weird._

The sheets feel clammy at first, but her body heat warms them. The mattress isn’t bad. It’s nice, actually — Holtz is beside her, warm and solid, and Erin lets herself relax while the Ghost Jumpers wander around Bristow Island on the screen of Holtz’s phone.

Erin curls up on her side, head against the pillows, and watches. They show reverse-colored shots of the inns and houses they drove past earlier. In voiceover, the Ghost Jumpers get into some of the paranormal history of Bristow Island. Most of it’s wrong. Patty gave the Ghostbusters some real history before they came down here, and Erin knows there’s no evidence for any of the stories the Ghost Jumpers are telling. No old sea captain’s daughter, no escaped convict — all of it’s wrong. 

“How can they do this?” she asks. “Ghosts are real, but all of this is —” She waves her hand. “Why do people watch this crap?”

“It’s egregious,” Holtz agrees, “but it’s fun to figure out how they faked it. Look, dust!” She points to an orb passing by the camera. The show plays the clip four times, moving into slower motion each time.

Erin lets her head rest against Holtz’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Tired.”

Holtz props the phone up a pillow and lets her head fall against Erin’s. The sound from the phone is tinny, but they don’t really need to hear much to understand what’s happening. The Ghost Jumpers seem to do all their research in dark, by flashlight. They caption their EVPs. None of the EVPs sound anything like what they claim they do.

“Such a waste,” Erin says. “They could be using those research dollars to do something.” She yawns. 

“Sleepy?” Holtz reaches out to switch off the light on her bedside table.

Erin finds herself watching Holtz’s hands in the light from the phone. She’s never seen them still before, never seen Holtz without a tool or a steering wheel or a terrifying new ghost-related invention. They’re nice hands.

“See the string?” Holtz whispers, and points at the phone screen as one of the Ghost Jumpers shrieks and runs from the room. “So fake.”

Erin nods, feeling Holtz’s shoulder under her cheek. “Totally.”

She falls asleep somewhere after the Ghost Jumpers walking the beaches of Bristow Island, calling for the Gray Lady to come forth. She thinks she feels Holtz kiss the top of her head, but it must be a dream.

* * *

Erin wakes up to the smell of coffee brewing, the sound of metal clinking in the next room. Beside her, there’s a smoothed-down cover and a pillow still showing the imprint of Holtz’s head.

She’s not sure why she’s disappointed.

She gets out of bed, stretching and yawning and realizing that she actually does feel rested. Usually Erin’s a restless sleeper, dreams intruding into her night and waking her up, but she doesn’t remember waking last night.

In the kitchen, Holtz is hanging halfway out a window. There’s coffee in the coffee maker, and a mug set out next to it.

“Erin!” Holtz pulls her upper body back inside. “Most excellent. The coffee is yours.”

“Thanks.” Erin pours herself the mug and takes a sip, relishing the feeling of the coffee blowing the cobwebs away. “Why were you leaning out the window?”

“Checking to see how the shutters install.” Holtz pulls a carton of eggs out of the fridge and starts doing something on the stove. “We’ve got a list, Gilbert. First up: Breakfast. Second: You shower, and I’ll find the storm shutters. Third: We get water up in buckets for the storm. Fourth: Storm shutter installation. Fifth: We walk the beaches, seeking the elusive Gray Lady of Bristow Island, much like the Ghost Jumpers before us, although in our case we’re not going on a clear day in April, so I like our odds a lot better.”

Erin blinks. “Are you sure you don’t want to shower first?”

“I have been up for hours,” Holtz informs her, and then squinches her nose. “Well, minutes. Long enough to shower already. And make coffee. And get the forecast. Dana’s up to a Category 2, and we’re still in line for a direct hit.”

“That’s — good?” Erin takes another sip of coffee. The plan was always to be down here for a direct hit, but now that they’re in the cone of uncertainty as it narrows, she wonders. She thinks of all the cars they saw yesterday, driving the other direction. Maybe —

“No second thoughts now,” Holtz says. “Come on. I’ll make breakfast.”

Erin tries to help, but Holtz herds her towards the kitchen table. “I got this, Gilbert.”

Erin watches while Holtz makes eggs — surprisingly good eggs, gently scrambled with butter and chunks of cheese. On the side, toasted English muffins with smashed avocado, a dash of lemon juice and olive oil, and a spice blend she’s sure she’s never seen at the Firehouse.

“How do you know how to cook?” Erin asks, through a mouthful of avocado and muffin. “This is delicious.”

Holtz snags another muffin. “I always figured it was just engineering, but with food… Abby ordered takeout at Higgins, so I never bothered.”

“This is better than takeout,” Erin says, through a partly-full mouth. “And I bet you’d give Abby more than one wonton.”

Holtz smiles back at her, and then they’re just looking into one another’s eyes, Erin unable to look away, a moment drawing out impossibly long.

Erin’s breath catches in her throat.

Holtz is the one to break it. “Let me get the dishes.”

“No, no way.” Erin doesn’t get to have people cook for her often, but she knows that the chef never gets the dishes. “All mine.”

* * *

Holtz finds the shutters while Erin’s in the shower. They’re in a mechanical room under the house, and Holtz waits for Erin before dragging them out. The wind’s already building, trying to snatch the metal from their hands as they maneuver the shutters over the windows and lock them into place with the latches.

The twilight from the covered windows makes the inside of the house feel strange, and they work quickly to fill the buckets that Holtz found under the house, and the collapsible drinking water containers Holtz found somewhere. Holtz is the one who remembers that they need to drag the plastic table and chairs from the deck inside.

Erin pulls out the PKE meter once they’re done. It’s a relief to leave the gloom of the house, even if it’s gray outside, and the wind’s blowing so hard Erin thinks it might push her away if she jumped. Above them, the sky’s filled with bands of linear clouds.

When they get to the end of the wooden walkway that leads over the dunes to the beach, Holtz jumps down, spinning around to look at the foam on the ocean. “Promising,” she yells back, as Erin walks down the wooden stairs, looking down at the PKE meter. 

The houses on either side of theirs already have their windows covered, with plywood, with metal shutters. Erin wonders if the Ghostbusters are the only ones stupid enough to stay through this. 

Holtz takes off down the beach, and Erin follows, watching the PKE meter slowly spin, stubbornly set at background levels. The wind is unrelenting, and smells like the sea.

There are some signs of life when they get further down the beach — people out with sheets of plywood, covering windows. The Ghostbusters wave and keep walking. 

They’re almost to the north end of the island when Holtz points to a woman at one of the bigger houses, trying to put up plywood by herself. Erin switches the PKE meter off and stuffs it into her jacket pocket before following Holtz, up the stairs and down the long wooden walkway to the house.

“Let me,” Holtz says to the woman, grabbing the other end of the plywood and hauling it up to hold against the window. 

“Thank you,” the woman says. She’s an older woman with curly, light hair whipping around her head in the wind. She screws the plywood into pace before reaching out to shake Holtz’s hand. “Shawna. Proprietor of the Dolphin Inn.”

“The Dolphin Inn?” Holtz’s eyes go wide behind the yellow lenses of her glasses. “Then you must have met the Ghost Jumpers.” She leans in. “Tell us everything.”

“We can help you with the rest of the windows,” Erin says.

“I’m not going to say no to that,” Shawna says. “My daughter’s off at college this year. Told her not to come back, but I’d forgotten what it’s like doing this alone.”

“We’ve got this,” Holtz says, and they follow Shawna down the stairs to help carry more plywood up from the parking area behind the inn.

Shawna insists on feeding them lunch, once they’re done. “We’re going to lose power,” she says, waving the Ghostbusters towards chairs at the end of a long table in her kitchen. “You’re doing me a favor, helping me eat down the fridge.”

“Do you usually stay here in storms?” Erin asks, while Shawna chops vegetables and cooks bacon and toasts bread. 

“Always.” Shawna grins. “It’s the best part of living here — I’m sure I’ll regret it some day, but for now? The wind? The rain? I’m seeing Mother Nature at her wildest. I love it.”

Holtz pushes her glasses up. “A kindred spirit.”

“I hear you girls are here looking for the Gray Lady,” Shawna says. When Holtz and Erin exchange a look, Shawna shrugs. “It’s a small town. News spreads. And it’s not like there’s a lot of ghost hunters willing to come into town to look during a storm.”

“We’re only here for scientific research,” Erin says earnestly. “We’re not going to try to trap or exorcise her.”

“I don’t think you could,” Shawna says, obscurely, and then she directs Holtz to a cooler in the back half of the kitchen to get them drinks, and has Erin set the table. Lunch is salad and sandwiches with fresh bread, thick-cut bacon, arugula, and juicy slices of tomato. 

“We saw this place on Ghost Jumpers,” Holtz says, and Erin realizes that it’s true. The Dolphin Inn looks completely different by flashlight than it does now. “Did they fake everything? Please tell me they faked everything.”

“I didn’t see much,” Shawna says, amused. “But the producers did ask me how to get into the crawl space. Make of that what you will.”

“The knocking from the floor!” Holtz looks delighted. “I told you, Erin!”

“You did,” Erin agrees, and takes another bite of her sandwich. It’s delicious. “So where do people see the Gray Lady, usually?”

Shawna looks at them, considering, and then nods towards the beach. “Usually at the south end of the island,” she says. “The public beach. It’s not far past where you’re staying. I can drive you down there, if you want.”

“Oh, we couldn’t,” Erin says, but Shawna shakes her head. 

“You rescued me,” she says. “I couldn’t have gotten all that plywood up on my own. Let me give you a lift. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

* * *

By the time they leave the Dolphin Inn, it’s started spitting rain, and the sky is a darker shade of gray. The waves are piling onto the shore, the sandy fringe wet with sea foam.

Shawna insisted on giving them a big plastic bag to cover the PKE meter. Erin tries to zip the bag closed around her hand, but the wind’s stronger down here, at the tip of the island, and the plastic tries to fly away in the wind. 

She tries not to think about how close they are as Holtz arranges the bag so the meter’s antennae can slowly spin, and tapes the edges of the bag around Erin’s wrist. She wonders when she became this person, this ridiculous person who burns with the knowledge that Holtz’s fingers are on her skin.

“There.” Holtz steps back.

Erin laughs when she holds her hand out. The PKE meter’s spinning slowly, not registering anything but background. With the bag taped around it, it makes Erin’s hand look like a mecha-hand in a cartoon or something. 

“Note to self: Make weather-hardened PKE meter,” Holtz says, and then she’s off down the beach, to the very tip of the island, where the causeway goes to the next island down. 

Erin follows more slowly, bracing herself. The wind-driven rain has soaked the left side of her body, her clothes sticking against her, her socks riding up. They approach the broken-down lifeguard chair. Two red-and-black hurricane flags flap madly from the aged wood.

They stare at the waves for a while, watching them turn a darker shade of gray. The rain backs off and then returns, harder, and Holtz turns to look at Erin.

“Still nothing?”

Erin waves her plastic-swathed PKE hand at Holtz. “Not according to the PKE.”

Holtz sinks down to the sand, and Erin sits down beside her. They stare out at the waves. The wind’s loud in Erin’s ears. She pulls her hair back with her free hand, wiping the raindrops from her face. 

Holtz is the first one to notice a woman walking towards them from up the beach, her form indistinct in the rain. Holtz bumps Erin’s shoulder, and Erin sees her and looks down at the PKE meter. Dead as it can be. It’s switched on, but the antennae aren’t spinning.

“Probably someone else staying over through the storm,” Erin shouts over the wind, but Holtz gets up anyway, and Erin follows.

They start walking towards the woman. As they get closer, they can see her more clearly through the sheets of rain. She’s wearing a dark dress, buttoned up to a high collar and falling to a long skirt. Her hair is long and dark, flying loose in the wind.

Holtz turns to Erin, an eyebrow raised, but the PKE’s still silent.

“Maybe there was a reenactment,” Erin suggests, although the woman seems to wear her dress like everyday clothes, not like a costume.

They keep walking. They’re almost at the woman when she looks directly at them, eyes knowing — and vanishes, leaving only empty air and sea spray behind.

Holtz runs down the beach, along the woman’s path. Erin looks down at the PKE meter, dumbfounded.

“You saw her too, right?” Holtz asks, jogging back to Erin. “Tell me you saw her.”

“I saw her.” Erin shakes the PKE meter. Still on. Still registering nothing. “If it was a hallucination, we both had it.”

“I refuse to believe that.” Holtz sighs. “Maybe the PKE meter got wet. Maybe it stopped working. Maybe….”

“It’s not like we have anything to calibrate it with,” Erin says, frustrated. 

Holtz scans the beach. “Maybe we did see it, but it wasn’t paranormal.”

“How would that even work?”

“I bet I could do it,” Holtz says. “Build a holographic projector, maybe.”

“And hide it where?” Erin gestures around them. The waves are pounding against the sand, and the wind’s howling over the beach. The houses are all far back, beyond the public beach and the seagrass and the dunes.

Holtz’s face lights up, and she heads toward the lifeguard stand. “When you have eliminated the impossible….”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to go up there,” Erin says, tagging along. Holtz ignores her and steps over the caution tape wrapped around the base of the lifeguard stand, ignoring the ominous creaking of the old, splintery wood.

She’s only halfway up the ladder when the stand gives way, slowly and then all at once, with a shriek of tearing wood and metal. There’s a moment where everything seems to freeze, and then Erin tears the PKE in its bag from her hand and runs towards the pile of splintered wood and metal.

“Holtz? Holtz.” She rounds the stand and sees Holtz, flat on the sand, her arm pinned beneath the pile of wood.

For a moment, Holtz is still, and Erin’s mind starts filling in nightmarish scenarios before Holtz’s eyes open.

Erin drops to the sand beside her.

“Don’t move,” she says, checking Holtz’s pupils and then scanning the rest of her body. “Can you move your toes? Your fingers? What hurts?”

“My arm,” Holtz says, grimacing. “And my pride. My pride is grievously wounded.”

Holtz starts moving her arm, gingerly. There’s a long laceration down her bicep that’s bleeding, and she’s got splinters in her hand, but Erin doesn’t see any other visible injuries. 

“I think you got off lucky,” Erin says, once she’s confirmed there’s no other injuries. She helps Holtz haul herself clear of the debris.

Erin picks up the PKE meter, and they stumble back to the house, Erin’s arm around Holtz’s good side, the two of them staying upright in the wind together.

* * *

They find a first-aid kit in the Flendersons’ bathroom, and Erin starts irrigating the laceration on Holtz’s arm with saline. She ignores Holtz’s insistence that she doesn’t need help.

“You do need help,” Erin says. She’s perched on the edge of the tub while Holtz looks down at her arm. “Unless you can take splinters out with your non-dominant hand.”

Holtz makes a face. “I still think duct tape would do just fine. Stick it on there, rip the splinters out.”

“ _Holtz._ ”

“Fine, fine.” Holtz leans forward and lets Erin inspect the laceration. It’s still bleeding, but slowly, and it looks shallow, which is a relief. Erin digs through the first aid kit to find gauze and makes a mental note to replace the Flendersons’ medical supplies. And find a first-aid kit for Ecto 1. She’s not sure how they didn’t have one already.

Erin runs through what she remembers of her first aid training. “Have you had a tetanus shot?”

Holtz looks at her. “You see the stuff I pull out of dumpsters. What do you think?”

“I think you’re changing the subject.” Erin brushes her fingers down Holtz’s arm — good, the bleeding’s mostly stopped — and then turns to the first aid kit for gauze and tape. “We can leave, you know. We can go get you a shot right now.”

“Yes,” Holtz says. “Yes, I’ve had my shots.”

Once Holtz’s arm is dressed, Erin pulls her Swiss Army knife out of her pocket. “Once upon a time, someone told me I’d need this,” she says, pulling the tweezers out of the end.

“Yeah?” Holtz smiles.

Erin takes Holtz’s hand to avoid looking at her, but then she’s holding Holtz’s hand and it’s even more distracting. She takes a deep breath and starts pulling splinters out, carefully, while Holtz watches her work. 

Outside, the wind’s picking up. Erin focuses on the sound, the keening of the ocean waves audible below the howling wind. Anything to avoid thinking about holding Holtz’s hand. 

“Doctor Gilbert,” Holtz says, as Erin pulls the final splinter. From someone else, it might sound sarcastic, but sarcasm isn’t what Erin hears in Holtz’s voice. 

Erin looks at Holtz’s eyes again, telling herself it’s just to check the pupil sizes, make sure there’s no signs of concussion, and then finds herself looking into Holtz’s eyes. Wanting to cup her hand along Holtz’s cheek, wanting to lean in. Wanting something more.

Holtz’s breath catches, her eyes still on Erin’s.

From the kitchen, Erin hears her laptop chime.

“Abby and Patty must be calling,” she says, dropping Holtz’s hand.

Behind her, Holtz mutters something about timing, but Erin’s already got the laptop open. Abby and Patty wave at them from the screen.

“How’s it going?” Abby asks from the screen. “Any ghost sightings yet?”

“Maybe.” Erin frowns. “It was weird — we saw a woman who disappeared, but the PKE didn’t go off or anything. We didn’t know she was a ghost until she was gone.”

Patty leans in. “What did she look like? Dress style?”

“I dunno.” Erin looks back at Holtz, who shrugs. “Long? It was dark, I remember that.”

“I know she had really long hair,” Holtz says. 

Patty groans. “You didn’t even see the collar style? The fabric?”

“Sorry,” Erin says, feeling guilty. “We figured she was a woman in an old-fashioned dress, and then she just… vanished.”

“Poof,” Holtz says. “Gone.”

“How’s the storm?” Abby pushes her glasses up her nose. “It looks pretty gnarly on the radar.”

“It’s pretty gnarly in person,” Holtz says, from behind Erin. She reaches past Erin with her good arm to pick up the laptop, and takes it to the door. As soon as she opens the door, the wind and rain howl into the house. The rain’s coming down harder, fuzzing out their view of the ocean and the beach into a white blur.

Erin pushes past Holtz and pulls the door shut, cutting the howl of the wind down to a dull roar.

“We checked the news before we called you,” Patty says, from the laptop. “The bridges are closed. Y’all better get ready to shelter in place.”

“We’re ready.” Holtz puts the laptop back on the table and pulls Erin into an awkward side hug with her good arm. “Gonna be a good one.”

Abby peers into the camera. “Make sure you get pictures if you see the woman again.”

“And stay safe,” Patty says, nudging Abby.

“Right,” Abby says. “Stay safe, and take pictures. If the PKE’s broken, at least we can get something.”

They sign off, and Erin checks the weather again. Hurricane Dana is about to hit them as a Category 2, the cone of uncertainty all but collapsed. Videos pop up on the pages Erin hits, filled with thumbnails of weather reporters in rubber boots and raincoats standing beside palmettos pushed over by the wind, waves splashing dramatically over sea walls. 

Holtz heads to the living room, headlamp on, and sets the PKE on the coffee table like she’s preparing to tear it apart.

“There’s an explanation here,” Holtz says. “There has to be.” She switches the PKE on, and it lights up obligingly, the antennae spinning slowly.

Erin curls up on the other end of the couch, her side against the arm, keeping her toes clear of Holtz. 

“It seems to be working now.” Holtz glares at the PKE. “Maybe you fixed it when you threw it on the ground.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a ghost,” Erin says. There’s something teasing at her, but she’s having trouble following the threads back. After all, what else could it be? Appeared and vanished in front of two witnesses, broad daylight, in conditions where a similar apparition has been reported for years. It seems like a classic haunting, except….

Holtz takes off her headlamp. She starts trying to pull out the pins in her hair, but catches herself as she lifts her bad arm, wincing in pain.

“Here,” Erin says. “Let me.” She gets up and pulls up one of the kitchen chairs behind the couch, and starts gently taking Holtz’s hair down, feeling with her fingertips for the pins and drawing them out as carefully as she can.

Holtz’s shoulders relax, slowly, as Erin untangles the damp strands from the top of Holtz’s head. Holtz’s hair is longer than she’d realized, thick and blonde. Erin’s never seen Holtz’s hair down before, and it feels oddly intimate.

“Hang on,” Erin says, and heads into the bedroom to get her hairbrush.

She starts from the bottom, working the snarls out before moving the hairbrush up to Holtz’s head. She runs the brush through, smooth strokes, until the brush runs through easily and Holtz’s hair rests in Erin’s hand like a heavy weight of silk.

Holtz’s hairstyle seems to have been held together entirely with bobby pins, but Erin’s got a spare hair tie wrapped around the handle of her hairbrush. “You want me to braid it for you?” she asks.

“Mmmm,” Holtz says, vaguely, and Erin brushes her fingers through Holtz’s hair, gently rubbing small circles into her scalp, Holtz leaning into her touch.

Erin lets herself run her fingers through Holtz’s hair a few more times, feeling the tug and pull of the damp hair, before she starts braiding. 

“Storm’s getting louder,” Holtz says, as Erin wraps the elastic around the end of the braid.

“Yeah.” Erin always thought it was an exaggeration, but it sounds like a freight train.

She lets Holtz’s hair drop and gets up. 

There’s a stronger gust of wind, one that shakes the entire house on its pilings, and then the lights flicker three times and go out.

“Landfall,” Holtz says, from the darkness.

The inside of the house is dark, the noise of the wind and the rain overwhelming. Erin stands still at the center of the room, not familiar enough with the house to know where to go. 

They planned to be here, in the storm, but there’s something different about it now. The two of them alone in an unfamiliar world, waiting in darkness for the storm to wash under the house. Waiting for the storm to take them away. 

Holtz clicks her headlamp on, the light held below her face in the classic sleepover ghost-story telling position. “Boo.”

The tension breaks, and Erin laughs and sits down next to Holtz, a little closer this time.

They sit in Holtz’s tiny pool of light, and Erin thinks about the storm. How it’s been hanging out over the ocean for days — how it was always going to make landfall somewhere. The only questions _where_ and _when_ and _how_.

Holtz is looking at her, and Erin realizes, with surprise, that Holtz’s gaze isn’t making her feel self-conscious. Erin Gilbert, the woman who could feel self-conscious in front of a potted plant.

She wants to look back. 

Maybe the two of them have been like the storm. Making their way towards landfall, meandering, uncertain, until the nebulous thing between them became inevitable.

“Let me check your eyes again,” Erin says, reaching towards Holtz’s light. 

Holtz doesn’t let Erin take the light. Instead, she sets the light aside and takes Erin’s hands in hers, and Erin lets her. Forgets everything but the look of Holtz’s lips in the light from the flashlight, the way Holtz’s eyes go dark when Erin meets them again —

Erin leans in, her heart beating louder than the storm, and kisses Holtz. There’s a moment before Holtz reacts, and Erin’s stomach sinks, wondering how she could have misread this, how she could — but then Holtz kisses back. Kisses back like Erin is something precious, her lips on Erin’s lips, her fingers brushing Erin’s cheek. 

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Holtz says, when they finally pull apart.

“Really?” Erin’s voice ragged.

“First time I saw you,” Holtz says. “Abby told me you were the devil incarnate, but one look at you….” She leans in again, sucking at Erin’s lower lip to punctuate her words. “That little bow tie. Devastating.”

Erin smiles against Holtz’s lips. “The Devil would have set off the PKE.”

“Technically, we have no data on that,” Holtz says, lips brushing against Erin’s cheek. She leans in, sucking and biting at Erin’s neck, her hands fisted in Erin’s shirt.

Erin shivers, her nose in Holtz’s hair, her lips against Holtz’s ear. Overwhelmed by the nearness of Holtz, the heat of her lips, her tongue against Erin’s skin. 

Holtz clicks off the light. Outside, the storm rages on, unheeded.

* * *

They’re tangled together in the bed when the noise from outside suddenly stops, the winds dying down like someone pulled a plug.

Holtz sits up. “Hear that?”

“Storm can’t be over.” Erin squints at her cell phone. “Too soon.”

“It’s the eye.” Holtz pulls on a pair of shorts and a flannel. She leans in to kiss Erin, breaking away before the kiss has a chance to get interesting. “Come on! It’s scientifically interesting!”

Erin smiles up at the ceiling for a moment, luxuriating in the warmth and the quiet and the taste of Holtz on her lips, and then drags herself up and pulls on sweatpants and a t-shirt before following Holtz out to the door and onto the deck.

“Whoah.” Erin takes a step back. It’s sunny, even though the wood of the decking is still soaking wet. There’s shingles on the deck, torn from houses around them. The waves are still hitting the beach, the water brown and unsettled. Apart from the lap of the water, it’s silent. No birds. No cars. 

Holtz takes off running down the long wood walkway down to the ocean, ignoring the water flowing underneath, and Erin follows her down to the end.

“I forgot my barometer.” Holtz stares down at the water, which has come most of the way up the steps. “What do you figure? Four feet?”

“The storm surge?” Erin squints. “Maybe. When was high tide?”

“I seem to have lost track of my normal tracking procedures.” Holtz looks over at Erin, side-long, and Erin grins and slips an arm around her, pressing her lips to Holtz’s temple. 

They watch the wall of clouds slowly draw closer. The rain starts first, just a sprinkle, but then the rain gets heavier, and Erin takes Holtz’s hand and starts dragging her back towards the house. 

Before long, the rain comes back with a vengeance, pounding down and soaking the two Ghostbusters. Erin pulls Holtz inside, their hair soaked, clothes damp, neither of them caring. Holtz insists on staying at the door until the wind returns, howling past the house so hard it takes both of them to shut the door.

Erin leans in to kiss Holtz again and laughs. “Doesn’t look like much damage yet,” she says, and then knocks on the coffee table to keep from jinxing things.

“Hopefully. This is the back half of the storm. Wind’s from another direction now. Standard vortex thing.”

Erin nods, visualizing the storm, and then stops.

“Say that again.”

“Standard vortex thing?”

“The PKE,” Erin says, her heart beating faster. “It wasn’t moving at all.”

“Yeah?” Holtz looks confused. “I know. It must have been broken. I’m going to give it a complete overhaul when we get back.”

“It wasn’t broken. It was working perfectly.” 

Holtz raises one eyebrow. “Come again for Holtzy?

Erin finds a notebook and starts sketching. “The PKE works by measuring spectral field particles, right? So usually we have a background level. The antennae spin no matter where we turn it on, because the spectral field is everywhere.”

“I know,” Holtz says. “That’s what Abby asked for, back when I designed it. You want coffee?”

“Yes. I want coffee very much.” Erin sits down on the couch, still sketching. If she’s right — she starts putting together the equations. They’ve never done a good background survey of baseline spectral field levels, because there’s never been a reason to. They’ve only been looking for increases in the spectral field — places where metaphysical phenomena are leaking out spectral field particles. 

_But what if it’s not constant?_ Erin thinks. What if there’s something, some natural vortex, that can attract spectral field particles? Something that feeds on them, maybe. Erin scribbles down more of the equations, trying to model the likely results in her head. She’s itching to feed her theory into Matlab, run some simulations.

“I think I have it,” Erin says, as Holtz puts a mug of coffee down on the coffee table in front of her. “She wasn’t a ghost.”

Holtz takes a sip of her own coffee. “We did both see her disappear into thin air.”

“She wasn’t human, either.” Erin passes Holtz the scribbled sheets and takes another sip of coffee, delicious and warm and — “Wait, the power’s still out. How is this hot?”

“You really were in a math trance.” Holtz pages through Erin’s notes. “I see the vorticity here, but why?”

“She’s something else,” Erin says. “Not human. Not a spirit the way we know them.”

She still needs to check it out, but she feels it in her gut, the way theories sometimes just feel right. It explains everything. Why the PKE died. Why Patty couldn’t find any stories that checked out to explain the ghost’s history. Maybe even the legends about the Gray Lady protecting the island. 

“So what is she?” Holtz asks, sitting down beside Erin on the couch.

“I don’t know yet, but whatever she is, she’s acting as a sink for spectral field particles. That’s why the PKE died.” Erin takes another sip of coffee. “I have to show Abby this math.” They’ve been so focused on entities as sources, they haven’t ever looked for sinks for spectral field particles.

“Sounds like you’re going to need a new PKE,” Holtz says. “Something quantitative.”

“Yeah,” Erin says, and then she realizes that she probably sounds presumptuous. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble? If you have time.”

Holtz sets Erin’s notes on the table and turns to look at her, eyes amused. “If I have time? Erin, baby, I have nothing but time for you.”

It’s ridiculous, the way Erin’s attention is completely diverted when Holtz calls her baby. She bites her lip. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” Holtz crowds up into Erin’s space, putting her hand on Erin’s waist. “Nothing but time.”

Erin leans in and kisses her. The math can wait.

* * *

With the storm blown past, it’s clear blue skies on Bristow Island, the ocean sparkling beyond the dunes. The electricity isn’t back yet, but Holtz and Erin have all the house’s shutters down and stowed back under the house. The early fall sunshine comes in the open windows as Erin puts the final touches on her notes. 

Erin hears the sound of Holtz’s feet on the stairs a moment before she bursts into the house. 

“The causeway is open!” Holtz slings a messenger bag filled with tools down on the floor. “I checked on Shawna. Helped her get the boards down.”

Erin shuts her laptop and gets up to kiss Holtz, a kiss that turns into something more.

“Right,” Holtz says, breathlessly, when they finally pull apart. “I was telling you something. What was I telling you?”

“Shawna,” Erin says. “How did the Inn do?”

“Few shingles gone. Otherwise fine.” Holtz winds her arm around Erin’s waist. “Gossip on the beach is that the storm destroyed a lifeguard stand.”

“Hurricane Holtzmann.” Erin laughs into Holtz’s hair.

Holtz is uncharacteristically quiet. “So do we leave now?”

“Do you want stay?” Erin pulls back to look at Holtz. “We have cell service back. I texted Abby my notes. She’s going to get everything up and running on the Matlab server. I checked in with the Flendersons, too. They don’t need the place back until the end of the week.”

“Maybe a day or two.” Holtz shrugs out from under Erin’s arm. “We still haven’t been swimming, and those waves look awesome. And I think I can make some upgrades to the PKE. We could measure the background levels now that the storm’s past.”

Erin follows Holtz out the door to the deck, lets Holtz take her hand and pull her down the long walk to the beach. “We should stay,” Erin says. “Maybe we go get dinner on the mainland. I’m getting tired of English muffin pizzas.”

“Erin Gilbert.” Holtz turns back. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“Are you saying yes?” Erin wraps her arms around Holtz. 

“Yes to all of it,” Holtz says, and leans in to kiss Erin. “Yes.”


End file.
